two dyrads one bowl?

I did it for SR3. I told my players this:

If everyone has easily armor piercing bullets all game long, then well, law of averages means that every professional has AP bullets.

I don't see why it breaks the suspension of disbelief. If every player looks for it, then it's the same for the NPC. That's my point.

I've banned a whole ton of items and Qualities for my upcoming game. Like, a whole ton. However, most of them were banned because they do not exist yet (game will start in 2055). AIs, pixies, drakes, technomancers, harumen, etcetera. (I am, however, allowing Latent Drake and Latent Technomancer, and most things will become available at some point.)

These are the ones I banned for other reasons:

• Incompetent: most open to abuse Quality ever, in my opinion. Given any character concept, I can rattle off a number of skills that that character would have no possible reason to use or learn. So taking that Quality would, in effect, not hamper the character at all.
• Borrowed Time/Cranial Bomb: they restrict my planning too much as a game master. Same with Deep Cover and Judas. If I decide your character has a cranial bomb or has been reprogrammed, you-the-player will find out when your character does: when it's both dramatically appropriate and almost too late. -Then- I'll give you the points for the Quality.
• Hung out to Dry: same as above. That's a game master tool.
• Any and all Infected: Because I don't want to deal with the implications in my game, or the inevitable inter-party conflict.
• Cyberpsychosis: same as above. Don't really want to deal with the themes it brings with it.

Oh, come on, I'm sure that my characters inability to pilot a hot air balloon, hang glider and parachute might impact the character. Just because the game is set on Mars is no reason to restrict it.

Personally, I only ever take Incompetant on a character if I think it's actually a hindrance. My most successful magician character got all the way to Grade 2 with Incompetant: Negotiation. (Let me tell you, that's a tough one to deal with.) I also had a throwing adept with Incompetant: Pistols. Incompetant: Intimidation is one I've taken with a face. It's not so bad as long as you don't TRY to abuse it.

What about a magician with Incompetence: Banishing?

Hah! While thematically that would be a pretty cool Incompetance for a magician, the game rules make the skill so worthless that I'd dispute whether that was even worth the 5 BPs. This is a problem with the mechanics being crappy and making Banishing a much less appealing alternative to other options.

I actively campaign in my Shadowrun circles for naming Banishing and Decompiling the worst skills in SR4 (with Decompiling winning that contest by a hair.)

I could see a mage with incompetence: Binding, to represent how some mages have moral qualms about using it. I could also see a mage with incompetence in the entire sorcery or conjuring skill group if you want to play an SR3-style aspected mage without taking a hit on things like astral perception. I took incompetence: leadership for a character in one of the forum games, Null, and played it as a serious hindrance - this was a guy who was pretty lost if he didn't have orders or someone telling him what to do.

But I agree that incompetence should be taken in a skill that the character will be hindered, even if slightly, by not having, and the degree of GM oversight needed to keep it from being abused might lead to a lot of GMs banning it outright to cut down on the drama.

Banishing becomes substantially more useful when you remember one simple fact. In SR4, you can pokemon insect spirits.

The second a GM throws an insect shaman at you, Banishing pays for itself. Just start Banishing and rebinding whatever spirits the bug shaman sends against you, within reason. If you're lucky you can grab one that hasn't been Invested yet and put it into whomever you want. Need a tank, put it in a motherfucking troll. What to kill a bunch of mofos, kidnap a heavily cybered prime runner gunbunny and put it in him. A fucking death machine, that thing becomes. Have schemes. Oh, there is so much you can do if you have schemes. You can make yourself your own pet politician, or even an upper-mid level megacorp officer.

That is a truly disturbing suggestion. And not in a good way. Shadowrun is supposed to be an unethical, morally grey dystopian setting... but that gets out of the morally grey territory and approaches perilously closely to morally black.

I don't know what I would do, as a GM, if one of the characters in my game tried that. Have his Mentor spirit drop-kick him, at the very least... and then have a different Mentor spirit make him an offer he couldn't refuse. Three-four sessions later, the rest of the group has to go take down a brand new Insect shaman.

This is an example of the only thing that banishing can do, it ONLY good for stealing spirits you can't summon. It's also a great example of lemonade making.

If you as the GM gives the PCs a nuke don't be surprised if there is a really bright flash in the not too distant future...

That's an extreme case of the pokemon trick. You could instead over-banish Posession spirits, giving you access to their abilities. At any event, the question remains: is Incompetence: Banishing or Incompetence :Ritual Sorcery legitimate choices for a full magician?

I think so. Incomp: Ritual Sorcery could well keep the magician out of some Initiation groups later on that might require this. It's a small thing, but it should be noticed. And a GM might be able to come up with something for this:

Johnson: ''Ah, you have a mage. Well, I need this done, a ritual...'''

Mage: ''Errm...I never quite got that...''

Johnson: *sighing, but looks at the rest of the team'' Well, you guys, I still need for the defense of the place. I'm sure I can find another one from somewhere else. I'm willing to pay X. (X is possibly an impressive amount).

Remember a -5 point Negative Quality is not supposed to plague the person all day, every day. It's supposed to come up once in awhile. I'd say Ritual Sorcery could pop up now and again.

Banishing...well, there are still a couple uses for it. As written, I'm not sure. There might be some situations...well, I suppose, for a Conjuring Adept-type, it could be nasty. They don't really have the access to spells to take them out.

They limit the character meaningfully:
- Banishing is required to play "must-collect-them-all" with the spirit types
- Ritual Sorcery allows one to pull tricks that are pure evil, given the right list of spells.

My verdict would be "legitimate". These are not very limiting for many characters, but it´s only 10 BP/20 karma combined anyway.

You don't see how that doesn't break suspension of disbelief because what you're talking about isn't what I was talking about. Chrysalis mentioned exploits, which implies rules loopholes or at the very least riding a particular tactic so hard that the game becomes overcentralized around it. A LoneStar CRT sharpshooter loading APDS into his HK Enforcer before firing upon a heavily armored troll samurai is not "exploiting" anything in the context I was talking about, he's merely putting two and two together. An exploit is more along the lines of the old Bloodzilla trick or abusing the grenade launcher rules to fire upon someone via a success test rather than an opposed test (a tactic which the FAQ puts to bed nicely, but could still be considered legal by the RAW). Meanwhile characters like the Pornomancer become dangerously close to overcentralizing the game since the dicepools can become so disproportionately large that any social scenario not involving another Pornomancer becomes a foregone conclusion. Really, the only thing that makes such a case manageable is the simple fact that the outcomes of social tests are still largely determined by the GM on the fly.

Hummmmm... Has anyone built a pokemon "Gotta collect them all" mage?

Almost. A member of my group considered to supplement the spirits of his possession-based tradition by stealing from the usually materialising spirits of security mages.

One of the most hilarious characters I created was an ex-Ork Underground enforcer - total loner, too - by the name of Hack (brother's name was Slash, naturally ) who was incompetent at negotiation, thus he needed to be part of a team 'cause he was getting the complete shaft trying to arrange jobs for himself. Made for some hilarious dialogue, especially because he hated the face.

Incompetence is a wonderful roleplaying tool, but I can also freely admit that twinks will abuse the crap out of it. Good idea is to make a list of skills you can't be incompetent at; (and make sure that all of the non-default eligible skills are on that list - I call BS on anybody that takes "Incompetent: Pilot Suborbital") it makes players think if they really need that extra 5 BP.

Oddly enough, if someone took Incompetent: Pilot Suborbital, I'd arrange a situation where they had to meet the rest of the team(as to not screw them), in a fast enough time they'd need to take a suborbital flight. I'd then recreate Airplane! where the entire crew eats bad soyfish, and thus they need a pilot.

...of course, I wouldn't murder his character, having at the very last second-maybe at the cost of a point of Edge, him able to deploy the inflateable co-pilot who would guide them to safety about 100km away from the meeting point, in which he'd have to get there on his own.

Problem is, some incompetences are, IMO, worth more than others. I like the idea of listing the skills like that-I might even go as far as to list the basic archetypes and what's kosher, and what's a no-no. Incompetent: Heavy Weapons I'd be fine with for a sam or merc, but not a Face. Incompetent: Pistols I'd say is fine for anyone. Incompetent: Hacking is a no-no for a sam...but for a hacker, it's crippling to the point of ''why would you take this?'' There might be a type of character that one can be used well for, though-not too harsh, not harmless.

Again, for 5 BP these shouldn't be horribly scrutinized, but at least have someone take something that might affect them once in awhile.

I wish I had my books here, but, er, banishing affects the number of services the spirit owes its summoner. Isn't the first service it takes away the current service it's performing? So if conjurer says, "Go kill these guys!" and big bad elemental comes trying to kill your team and you succeed on one success with Banish, does it negate the "Go kill these guys!" service leaving the mage to re-instruct the spirit, who might decide to leave in the mean time?

I could be totally wrong on that.

If a hacker takes "Incompetence: Hacking" they deserve whatever they get, so throw the book at them! Though Incompetence: Hacking should be fine for a rigger since, technically, they don't need to hack jack (heh....).

All the same, the "Airplane!" idea could be good.... Though I wouldn't penalize a face for taking Incompetence: Heavy Weapons. You never know when he might be the only person around to man the LMG on the back of the getaway van and... well... can't!

Incompetance: Demolitions is valid for any character.

Ya got a point about the Face. I suppose about any weapons-based skill could end up hairy.

Though I wonder just how it...looks. Like, say you have Incompetent: Throwing Weapons. How do you explain this? Like, every item you throw inexplicably falls on the ground a foot in front of you? It flies backward? It's a rather odd quality, in that I know what it does, but I don't know how to hell to explain it. I mean, I can explain maybe Incompetence: Pilot Something as you just have no freaking clue what the hell is going on and have problems figuring it out, but I have trouble explaining how someone can be incompetent in Unarmed Combat. Like, you just can't, no matter how hard you try, make a fist and punch?

The face with Incompetance: Unarmed Combat can't punch someone because their parents bashed it into their heads that good kids do not get into fistfights and punished them harshly for even the mildest infraction. They don't think about getting into fist fights and they can't understand why you would want to hit things with your fists. Incidentally, they don't think about blocking either.

They could also be foppish. That's a more amusing reason, I guess.

Edit: Or their "fight-or-flight" switch is welded on "flight" setting when it comes to getting more up close and personal than rapier length.

Their reflexes could be "wired wrong" for a fist fight.

I have not read all of the post, so forgive me if this one is already there.

Ban Spell: No mind reading spells. The GM thinks its a cheating if you could read minds to find the answer.

If you mind read your Mr. Johnson and found out that "he is seting you up".!

By the time the entire team has gone down, and the person with Incompetent: Pilot Suborbital is the only one left, you're already so far past screwed it's not even funny.

I'll point out another flaw in the Incompetence rules. Let's say you take Incompetence: Hardware. On the surface of it, it's legit: there's lots of uses for the Hardware skill, even for non-deckers. Here's the catch, though: The big restriction on Incompetence is that you can't default to the skill-- and you can't default to Hardware anyway.

Oh, and technically speaking, you can take Awakened and Emergent skills as Incompetences. I mean, a mage can legitimately take Incompetence: Banishing, so a mundane can as well. I think just about everyone fixes this with a house rule, but it is technically RAW.

Heh, ElFenrir, I don't think you've ever seen anybody incompetent at throwing. Like throwing baseballs, instead of at the plate, into the ground 2 feet in front of him. He just couldn't seem to get it!
Incompetence with running would get me, personally.

Yeah, remember when, back in SR3, you could take magical skills as a mundane?

... That was fun.

It's nothing you can't do with Ally spirits in SR4, it's just a heck of a lot cheaper to do it with bugs. A good Ally costs a fairly decent chunk of karma.